Roark wrote:This morning I looked at my hands and decided this must be a successful manly-man project. I decided it was time to wear gloves again. To the store.

BTW: I finally figured-out why Sunbeam was so "go-go-Roark!" on this project. Turns-out she has her eye on using this prototype eventually as a plant-dome-thingie. She tipped her hand when she wandered through my garage with a tape measure, muttering about Platyceriums, heat, light, CO2 and misting systems. She denied it of course, but then I found a well-fondled issue of "Greenhouse Design Digest" hidden beneath a placemat on her table, and the cat was out of the bag.

I am SO abused. Sigh.

I am SO wrongfully accused. The Greenhouse Design Digest has some water collection and filtering designs that might be applicable to the playa. Really... Don't laugh... I mean it.

Today was the Great Stompage. 250 struts. 500 ends. And a six pack (or three) of beer. Score thus far: Roark: 250. Errors: 0. (insert gopher-dance here). I broke-down and decided the 20-ton MANUAL press I was using needed to be air-powered. So $125 later, I now have a press that makes pneumatic noises and will stomp a piece of 3/4 inch conduit into a beaver tail with amazing speed and precision. So life is good!

What I have learned is this: I am an idiot. The L3 (F4) dome with 250 struts is just a freakin' PROJECT! I watch these videos where folks cobble together an F3 dome in a weekend and I'm saying "well... an F4/L3 can't be THAT much more difficult, right?". Wrong. As the strut-count doubles, the effort increases by a factor of 4x.

So. Enough griping from me. Tomorrow is Drill Press Day. 500 holes left before the test assembly. I can do this. Now where did I put that 4th six-pack of beer.... I'm gonna need it.

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

After drilling about 30 struts, I realized I needed a sharper bit so off to Homeless Despot I went. When I asked the hardware kid where they were hiding the 21/64th drills he looked at me like I had two heads. I actually had to show him the dull bit shank before he would believe that such a thing existed. Right across the street was a Lowes, so I checked there. They had 21/64ths, (and the 60-something hardware salesman had no trouble with the notion of that size as he's a retired machinist), but they only had it in black oxide. I swallowed my pride, bought two and went home.

Then the fecal matter hit the rotating blades. After drilling 30 more struts She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO'd) appears in my workspace (a big no-no!) and informs me that Roark Junior was vomiting. He's a special needs kid so this is officially Really-Not-Good. After futile attempts to fix things, we cut and ran and took him to Houston were he was admitted to the ER. That was Sunday PM. Flash forward to Tuesday night. We just got him home. RJ is fine, but his parents are pretty well done-in. Nevertheless I drug my sorry ass out to the garage and managed to drill 10 more struts before I finally said "fook it". 28 hours with no sleep will leave anybody pretty shagged.

So, Roark is slow and way behind schedule, but the dome is patient! And the really important thing in my life is snoring contentedly on the couch as I write this.

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

Gah! Sorry to hear about the emergency, but glad to hear he's home and getting some rest. You do the same - you may feel a little behind schedule, but remember it's only January. You'll make up the time easily enough once you've gotten some rest, and the project will likely rock.

Roark Jr. is quite fine.Hungry, and embarrassed. A good thing.The project is behind, but Roark thinks we can assemble the greenhouse on Sunday.Oh shit - did I say that?I meant the prototype for the 30 foot dome...

Clearly there is a story here with Ygmir. One I need to hear... perhaps in the shade of a dome on the Playa with a few tall ones? DevilFish is right however. One hospital admit is enough.

Thanks for your comments and supportive thoughts. They are genuinely, and deeply, appreciated.

BTW: If we're going to call CF "DevilFish", maybe Savannah needs a really epic moniker too? How about "TigerBunz"? When I become King Of The World, I also plan on changing SunBeams name. Anybody know how to translate "cooks ravioli with a stick" into Apache?

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

Roark wrote:Clearly there is a story here with Ygmir. One I need to hear... perhaps in the shade of a dome on the Playa with a few tall ones? DevilFish is right however. One hospital admit is enough.

Thanks for your comments and supportive thoughts. They are genuinely, and deeply, appreciated.

BTW: If we're going to call CF "DevilFish", maybe Savannah needs a really epic moniker too? How about "TigerBunz"? When I become King Of The World, I also plan on changing SunBeams name. Anybody know how to translate "cooks ravioli with a stick" into Apache?

I think in Hawaiian it'd be "ComeonIwannalayya".re-naming Savannah may be tough, IMO. Especially if you're trying for physical attributes. Of course she has many, but the true beauty is between her ears. A stunning intellect combined with a rapier wit, added to superior powers of deduction and near psychic prescient cognition.

a fuckin genius, really.

oh, and Roark: do you ever sharpen drill bits? I've found a dremmel and small chainsaw stone work great.

I have limited exposure to Savannah Of The Playa, but I'm inclined to agree with you Ygmir (aka "Holmes", if I am reading the fine print correctly!). I'll get a better handle on a nym once I've met her. I do love what I see however. Reaffirms my faith in the Younger Generation!

As to Sunbeam, (her name is *also* Savannah!), I plead the FIfth.

Once I recover from lunch, I plan on finishing the Great Dome Strut Drilling Event. Maybe tomorrow I can start assembling!!! WHOOO HOOOO. Pictures when it comes together.

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

ygmir wrote:oh, and Roark: do you ever sharpen drill bits? I've found a dremmel and small chainsaw stone work great.

Nope. I have had ZERO success with sharpening these. These are "split-point" bits and the included central angle seems to be critical. What I have done however is to make the worlds most out-of-tune harmonicas. Once I sharpen them, they positively HOWL when touched to metal. Then they smoke. Then the metal galls instead of drills.

And then I throw them away. YMMV.

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

Sunbeam56 wrote:I have borrowed a backhoe. Roark will have the dome parts, but not the tripod to lift the final levels into place. So I can lift them with the backhoe.

OMFG! Woman on a backhoe! RUN!!!!

Seriously however, you should know it wasn't borrowed for THIS project really... it was borrowed for resculpting her waterfall in the back pond. The girlie does have odd priorities!

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

Complications arose, ensued... but we are back on track now. Below is the finished "strut pile". Two hundred and fifty of these blasted things!! All of the same-type struts are within 1 mm of each other in length and all the holes are located within the same tolerance from their spec'd center. My little jigs worked well.

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I even chamfered all 500 holes on both sides so there wouldn't be any "bloody ends" in my future. (I don't want to have to wear gloves when I assemble this on the playa. Old fingers need as much tactile feedback as they can get and those nuts are fairly small).

photo(6).JPG

Just as I finished stacking these for the picture, Sunbeam came motoring-up in the garden tractor pulling her little dump-trailer. My truck died two weeks ago and it was her solution to the metal-strut transportation problem. As utterly repulsive as I found her solution, the damned things fit in that trailer like a glove!!! When last seen she was enroute (at the whopping speed of 4 mph) to her house about a mile and a half down the road. I was going to get a picture of her and her "cargo", but neither of us were particularly photogenic at that moment.

Tomorrow at first light we will begin the test assembly. Thereafter, the Great Dome Covering Experiment begins! (And then Figjam, I'm building an evap cooler I think you'll be proud of. Gotta have A/C if you got a dome, right?

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

As another board member says in his sig: "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!"

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

It took Sunbeam and I about 5 hours to assemble, but in the end it all fit together like a Swiss watch. We never made a mis-step, never had to disassemble anything to "correct" a goof. Not too shabby for a bunch of complete 'Noobs. Sunbeam even kept me in snickets and beer the whole day. (You totally rock, Girlie!)

By way of summary: This is an L3 variant of a Fuller F4 dome. 20 feet across the base, 10 feet high, 250 struts of 5 different lengths made of 3/4 inch EMT conduit. (See: http://www.simplydifferently.org for additional info).

photo(7).JPG

The completed dome is monstrously strong. There is absolutely no question I could suspend 2-3 thousand pounds from it. You can climb on it, jump on it, do whatever, and it does NOT move at all. If it is staked down properly, this would survive a hurricane.

I have always understood at an intellectual level how these things work, but to see it in person has a far different effect. The dome becomes a tactile object that responds to your touch. As you assemble the last few struts, everything tightens up, and that Buckminster Fullerene magic suddenly appears and the structure becomes an anvil. It. Will. Not. Budge.

Next project: A door or two, and the covering. And then a bigger one since this prototype worked-out so well. With A/C, Figgy-Style!

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman